pase@ogcvax.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) (04/17/88)
This whole discussion has brought to the surface one of my pet peeves. It seems in some cases that an MS in CS is used as a shortcut into industrial positions -- either programming or leadership. I have seen a number of people with an unrelated BS degree (e.g. Biology, Chemistry, or English) get an MS in CS, and receive better offers/treatment than those with a BS in CS. I would consider this reasonable IFF those people had a better grasp of CS, programming, or SOMETHING worthwhile. (You probably think I'm now going to tell you they didn't, and you're right.) In each of the cases I had to work directly with the individuals, and they were more of a liability than an asset. They would propose ambitious programs/features with almost no concept of performance or how such things would be implemented. Even taking care of the more mundane things seemed almost beyond them. In two of the three cases they were also Prima Donnas who demanded better equipment for themselves than was available to the rest of the group. (And no the rest of you guys can't have new stuff -- it's too expensive!) In all fairness, my sample size is three, and each of these guys had been out of school no more than two years by the time I got them. Also, I worked with several others who had BS degrees in Math and/or CS, and an MS in CS; I observed no such problems with them. I don't think there's anything wrong with an MS in CS, but I do see problems with having a BS in something unrelated if you've got one. -- Doug Pase -- ...ucbvax!tektronix!ogcvax!pase or pase@cse.ogc.edu (CSNet)
fletcher@b-mrda.UUCP ( Justin Fletcher ) (04/30/88)
I should first point out that I'm 'one of those guys' with an unrelated degree. I have had the good fortune to discover from working with a number of very good people that the degree itself meens nothing. People fresh out of school still need major amounts of training to become accustomed to the real world and to gain experience working on products that must 1. work and 2. be supportable. The importance of supportable comes best from doing that support for a while -- its need becomes self-evident. My conclusions from a few years of working with and even hiring programmers is that I don't really care about the degree (I don't even care if they've got one) but I do care about the experience. Yes, people still fresh out of school are (and should) be hired. They have the latest techniques and methods (I hope) but I still prefer an individual with experience (whatever the degree) to play a key role in product development.
jonson@unicom.UUCP (Mary D Johnson) (05/05/88)
In article <6300001@b-mrda.UUCP> fletcher@b-mrda.UUCP ( Justin Fletcher ) writes: >I should first point out that I'm 'one of those guys' with an unrelated >degree. I have had the good fortune to discover from working with a >number of very good people that the degree itself meens nothing. stuff deleted >Yes, people still fresh out of school are (and should) be hired. They >have the latest techniques and methods (I hope) but I still prefer >an individual with experience (whatever the degree) to play a key role >in product development. I have found the same to be true after working in both the scientific programing and 'business' applications world. The new 'kids' on the block bring the yeast to the mix to keep us 'old' duffers on our toes. The only problem I have run into is when the youngsters want to do all the new exotic stuff, and haven't done some of the maintenance work that they are usually hired to do (since no one else wants to do it). Also found it hard to convince scientific (FORTRAN) types that they needed to learn some of the other languages if they wanted to keep their jobs when the company had to start doing design and maintenance work in the area of business applications.